Internet of Things (IoT) based Flex Force Smart Glove for Physical Rehabilitation

Rehabilitation among stroke patients are important to provide recovery in dexterity and muscle strength, but the process involved is usually lengthy and complex. Researches have proposed many different approaches to the rehabilitation process, introducing distinct methods to exercise the patient's muscle. To assess the feasibility of the proposed procedures for rehabilitation, an accurate and consistent methodology must be applied to avoid biases while collecting the data. This paper proposes a wearable flex force smart glove to measure a patient's finger dexterity through finger flexes and presents the data in a systematic and comprehensible structure. The system allows real-time remote monitoring of data stream through the internet, and data logging for further analysis. Quantitative analysis on the system is also performed and comparisons with the commercial solutions are presented. It has been discovered that each communication between devices, from the Arduino to Raspberry Pi, and from the Raspberry Pi to Android device imposes additional time, therefore causing small but discernible performance reduction.